Cross-console gaming takes a huge step forward

Today marks an incredible point – Chris Charla of Xbox wrote an open letter announcing a few things, including the ability for Xbox One and Windows 10 gamers to play with players on different platforms. Cross-platform play between Xbox One and Windows 10 was something Microsoft was always eyeing up, and has recently started to fruition before us. At this point, we thought they were truly building a wall around their platform to show they could only play nice within it, but this changes things.

While I’ve been playing games for the past 15 years I’ve always wanted to see open play between different platforms. Despite your best efforts to get the same console as your friends you sometimes end with someone who has a game on the other console. Some games in the past offered it, and even if did, it was only within that console family. The GameBoy allowed your Pokemon to put on Pokemon Stadium using a transfer pack, while other games allowed your previous saves to be transferred from one generation of console to another.

As said, it’s up to other developers (and console manufacturers) to be on board and enable this. It’s amazing that Microsoft are the first to open the door on this. It allows stupid amounts of possibilities. The Division cross-platform. Destiny cross-platform? These would obviously just be adding something onto an old game, but what could happen in the years to come as cross-platform play becomes part of the development process?

I appreciate this is mostly ifs and maybes right now, but Rocket League did the solid of allowing PS4 players to go against PC not long ago. This was around the similar time that Sony announced PS4 remote play was coming to PC. Technology has come a long way. Mayhap such things weren’t available when gaming was the small money making machine that it was. Keep your eyes open though!

Half-Life 3 not confirmed.

What do you think of this? Do you think cross-platform play is as awesome as we do? Let us know!